“You didn’t have uniforms—”
“I showed you my documents!”
“But there was a German with you—”
“From the criminal police. He’s helping us.”
“How was I to know?”
“I told you clearly we were looking for a murderer.”
Her husband had been studying Morava. Now he made a decision.
“Tell them. They don’t look like provocateurs. And it’s out in the open now anyway. What if something happened to Malina?”
“Karel…” She swallowed and corrected herself. “Mr. Malina came on Tuesday to tell me he was hiding a parachutist…”
No! Morava despaired; he’d been here — just one door away.
“… and that he’d be going away to meet the man’s contacts, so he might be detained. He took his keys back; I had to swear not even to tell my husband.”
“But you did tell him,” he reproached them both.
“Only yesterday. I thought it was taking too long, and by now it seemed a bit strange…”
“Have you heard anything from next door?”
“No. But a cop could have a peek, couldn’t he?”
“Not legally,” he said, chafing at the impotence of old-fashioned laws. “We have to have authorization for forced entry. I don’t know where I would get it in this situation, so I’ll take responsibility for it myself. But I need both of you as witnesses for the opening, search, and closure of the apartment.”
The engineer agreed for both of them. When Litera tried to pry the door open with a tire iron, the man brought a whole box of tools from his apartment and wedged a massive chisel in himself. At the second hammer blow the lock gave way. A stench hit them as if they’d opened a sewer.
It never ends, Morava thought, his heart sinking. Dumbly he exchanged a knowing glance with Litera, who no longer hid the pistol in his hand, and suggested to the woman, “Better stay here, ma’am. I’m afraid it won’t be pleasant.”
“Run along home, Eli
ka,” her husband ordered.
Now the import of it hit her, but she could not obey. Collapsing against the staircase wall, she clutched her throat with her hands.
Piles of trash lay in the kitchen; an unmade bed and an open wardrobe greeted them in the bedroom. Morava pressed down on the last door handle, his hand wrapped — out of habit — in a handkerchief.
In the bathtub, on a checked blanket smeared with feces, lay a small man, dead less than twenty-four hours.
Jan Morava immediately remembered another body lying beneath a cover of soil and once again felt the touch of pure despair.
He was the first to wake up, thanks to his bladder. They had left the German woman overnight to “rest in peace,” as the bald and toothless Lojza jokingly put it. There were plenty of other guest bedrooms in the extensive apartment, but his wariness had led him to choose a maid’s chamber instead, where he could sleep alone and lock the door.
It was raining. Not hard, but persistently; in the misty morning the scrawny courtyard trees evoked the inhospitable mood of a chill winter’s end. Here and there a pop resounded, as if someone nearby had smashed an inflated paper bag; it didn’t sound at all like distant gunfire. The noises were so few and far between that suddenly he felt worried: maybe it was all over. THAT WOULD BE A SHAME!
Yesterday, he was sure, had been a milestone in his life just like the day he punished that floozy in Brno. With one difference: back then he had failed miserably, thanks to his own incompetence, and withdrawn into his shell for years; it took him from February until the black April day when they nearly caught him to crawl painfully out again. Still, since the uprising began yesterday he’d done better than he’d ever dreamed, and now he was awash in self-confidence, just like that rookie on the Brno shooting range years ago.
Most of all, he FELT GREAT. Although he had devotedly followed HER orders, he had always been prone to treacherous attacks of lethargy. Now he knew their source: society’s hypocritical morality had forced him to hide. It called righteous purges a crime and had him pursued like a beast, hoping to wreak its sorry retribution on his neck. The same society, however, had now declared open season on its occupiers, and he was its tool of punishment.
I AM THE NATION!
On the way to the bathroom he gave the others a military wake-up call; before he could shower, he found them blinking sleepily in the kitchen. Real coffee (which they’d found here, of course) revived them, and Lojza remembered the German in the bedroom.
“Anyone like seconds?” he asked.
The boy turned red as he shook his head; clearly he was afraid of any further humiliation.
” ’snot really my thing,” the stoker admitted. “I have to feel a woman all around me.”
“Well, I’ll just jump on ’er for a second and then we’re off,” the bald man said. “Sure you don’t want any, Ludva?”
This time he was ready.
“Actually I do,” he said, “but once you’re done, and my own way. Let me know.”
When Lojza reported a short while later that he’d had his fun and was looking forward to the show, even the others could not hide their curiosity. The night had not been kind to the German; she certainly hadn’t slept and the uncomfortable position had exhausted her perhaps even more than the men’s lust. When all of them entered the room again, she did not even open her eyes.
“I know,” Ladislav guessed. “You’ll do her dressed, so you won’t get dirty.”
He grimaced ironically at the stoker.
“Look at me!” he ordered her in German, the way he had done to the baroness in February, and to the rest in Czech thereafter.
So she listened, and he once again saw in her eyes animal fear splintering into humble resignation, as if he were her only hope.
Suddenly he was hungry to SHOW THEM ALL OF IT. In the theater where he’d worked, he had never understood how a grown man could take satisfaction in performing, but now it was exactly what he longed for. Of course it was primarily the boy he wanted to see it, Pepík might be his first apprentice.
WATCH OUT!
A red light flashed in his brain. Was he really out of danger? Someone might recognize him and try to make him into a run-of-the-mill murderer. With one witness still at large (whom he couldn’t forget), could he afford to hang three more around his neck, including an adolescent?
I’M NO FOOL!
After all, he could show them another way, similar, but a bit more ambiguous. He’d just neutralize that perfidious dove, where her depraved soul would try to hide!
He checked that her mouth was still well gagged, and placed the point of the knife beneath the nipple of her breast.
“This is how I do it,” he said.
He began to press, gently but insistently. The sharp blade broke the skin, leaving only a red line. Her body tensed as far as the straps permitted; the sound that emerged from under the gag was more like a long brass tone with a mute.
Yes, now he was really aroused, truly aroused like a man who determines life and death, but his hand remained firm, pressing evenly on the haft even while the woman struggled ever more fiercely. Her eyes seemed to flow over, but so did those of the men, he noticed with satisfaction. No one breathed a word; motionless, they followed the slow plunge of steel into her breast.
Then, finally, his sense of touch told him the tip of the knife had reached her heart. Normally he stopped here to come back to it after he had finished the rest. He paused now as well, but only to release his fist for a moment and show them the blade stuck firmly in her flesh. The German had meanwhile closed her eyes; she was trying to escape, to flee from him in spirit.
The other three men were pale. He could not risk it; their wonder might turn into disgust. He grasped the handle again with his fingers and guided it in as deep as it would go. The body immediately slackened. He ripped out the knife, and to his surprise, there was not a drop of blood on the blade.